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Five core tenets for creating a social enterprise

Social has come of age for business. And soon, social may be the dominant means of talent acquisition, customer research and customer service for the social enterprise.

Overview

Social has come of age for business.

Nearly nine in 10 US companies with at least 100 employees will use social media for marketing purposes this year.

Millennials have embraced social like no other digital channel, fluidly engaging with peers and providers across multiple digital channels and devices.

And as social adds to the large volume of data companies now collect, there is huge potential benefit for those companies that can make it actionable.

With nearly half of smartphone-owning millennials discovering brands on social media, and the inevitable “digitization of everything” through connected devices and the Internet of Things, it’s entirely feasible that, within five years, the social enterprise could completely redefine customer value, with social being the dominant means of talent acquisition, customer research, and customer service.

Discover the Five Tenets for Creating the Social Enterprise below, or download the PDF[516 KB].

Social media has revolutionized the way brands communicate—and how customers and employees connect.

High performing companies see social media and collaboration as a huge opportunity to drive revenue growth, create customer relationships that your competitors don't have, and create a strongly differentiated brand.

Learn more about Accenture Interactive Digital Social Media and Collaboration:

Watch and listen as Robert Harles, Global Head of Social Business at Accenture and Forbes Chief Insights Officer, Bruce Rogers, explore the value of social to drive business transformation and guide priorities and investments.

Social Enterprise of the Future

Emerging Trends Driving Social Expansion

The Internet of Things represents perhaps the single biggest technology trend impacting businesses in the next decade.

Industrial Internet of Things — connected, intelligent products that communicate with users - creates new ways of automated and personal interaction. In this connected everything environment, social media can drive new ways of collaboration within and beyond the organization. But companies need to think carefully about how they participate and resist the temptation to go with the crowd.

Finding the right way to engage requires defining a social etiquette and protocols around what the devices collect, use, share and respond.

The best place to start is by identifying the two or three things you know about your customers that your competitors don’t. Then use that information to create competitive advantage by delivering exceptional value your customers covet.

In fact, many organizations are dramatically underserved by their levels of social investment as they continue to struggle with basic capabilities. Just 40 percent of organizations are using data gained from social media to improve their bottom line. Sixty percent are challenged to find actionable use for data collected.

If companies are not fully equipped to operationalize social across the business, they risk failing to do it right—which can have significant impact on the brand and customer relationships.

To be successful in the 21st century digital economy, companies must wholly embrace and integrate social into the enterprise, including managing fast-moving and fragmented social technologies. Some of the major challenges include:

Operating with multiple point solutions disconnected from enterprise technology, forcing IT to maintain numerous different platforms and systems

Maintenance and integration consumes IT leaders’ time, limiting their ability to focus on value-adding capabilities

Security risks and data privacy issues

Budgets, staffing, and management of social technologies and programs, with little data on the impact of social across channels

Given these challenges, getting results that deliver strategic impact requires doing social differently, instead of relying on the reactive ebb and flow of the marketplace

Five Core Tenets

Businesses enrich their customer engagement using both online and oﬄine data. Integrating social data provides added beneﬁts from advanced insights, predictive analytics and a deeper understanding
of the customer-brand relationship.

To accurately measure the value of their social activity, companies need to tie social metrics to real business impact. Using a contextual ﬁlter of what this activity delivers allows them to evaluate opportunities and outcomes in real time.

By placing analytics at the core of everything they do, truly social enterprises marry solid business sense and analytics-based insights to architect better solutions. It’s a bold mindset aﬀecting every employee, and most importantly senior management.

Companies that seek greater agility must adapt and develop their learning. Synthesizing social vision and pragmatic execution, to advance new capabilities, real time responsiveness and the all-important speed to market.

Social implementation brings transformational change, but long-term beneﬁts will best be realized through distinct attention to the structures, roles, responsibilities, security and measures underpinning each business decision.

Riding the Waves

If done well social can increase intimacy and relevance, which can be the customer tipping point between buying or not buying, remaining a loyal customer or going elsewhere.

It's easy for corporate and organizational leaders to be lulled into social complacency, especially when nothing has gone wrong...yet. For many, the clock is clicking toward one social misstep that could spell disaster for a product or the company's brand reputation.

To protect against these risks, and to drive measurable strategic impact from social, requires companies to change the way they think and behave.

First, forward-thinking businesses will begin with a strategy that integrates social into their business objectives.

Next, they will put the right resources and capabilities in place and take a "test, learn, and earn" approach to fine-tune their strategy over time.

Finally, social enterprise leaders will turn this game-changing capability into a competitive advantage, weaving it throughout the enterprise, building defensible customer relationships and future-proofing their business.

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